OTTAWA —
The federal government has released an updated COVID-19 vaccination timeline, showing that at least 14.5 million Canadians will be able to be immunized by the end of June with the approved Pfizer-BioNtech and Moderna shots.
Both of these currently approved vaccines require a two-dose regimen and the Public Health Agency of Canada’s timeline indicates that these figures are based on each person receiving both their first and second shots.
The number of Canadians able to be vaccinated in that timeframe will increase considerably, should additional vaccine candidates be given the green light by Health Canada.
The timeline shows that up to 24.5 million Canadians could be fully vaccinated by the end of June, if shots from the other vaccine companies Canada has deals with are granted regulatory approval, such as the AstraZeneca or Johnson & Johnson vaccines.
These figures are based on how much vaccine supply Canada will have, and it will be on the provinces and territories to execute a timely administration of these doses.
The new timeline issued on Thursday shows how many Canadians are projected to be immunized each quarter between now and the end of September. It’s an update from the initial estimates issued at the start of Canada’s vaccine rollout in December 2020.
That modelling showed the federal government was aiming to have between 15 and 19 million Canadians vaccinated by the end of June.
Under the current timeline, between 38 and 64 per cent of the population will be immunized by the end of June.
During an update on Canada’s mass vaccination efforts, Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin said that the change in the figures is due to a few factors, including the federal government securing additional access to more shots earlier in the spring, and that Health Canada has sanctioned vaccine administrators to extract six instead of five doses from Pfizer vials.
The timeline still shows that millions of Canadians will be waiting until sometime between July and September to receive their vaccines, with enough doses of Moderna and Pfizer alone to complete Canada’s mass vaccination effort.
With those two vaccines alone, 42 million Canadians will be vaccinated by the end of September.
If additional vaccines are able to be used, the country will have enough doses to vaccinate all 38 million Canadians more than twice over, with expected access to enough shots to immunize 79 million people.
However, as things stand these vaccines have yet to be approved for use in children, and the federal government is anticipating a degree of vaccine hesitancy in which eligible adults opt not to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
The projections continue to indicate that by the end of March three million Canadians will have been immunized, which represents eight per cent of the population.
More to come.
